WHO urges completion of pathogen-sharing system at UN pandemic preparedness meeting
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The Facts
- The UN held a high-level meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response in New York.
- WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged states to complete the PABS system quickly.
- PABS links pathogen-data sharing to access to resulting vaccines, treatments and diagnostics.
- Completion of PABS is needed for the WHO Pandemic Agreement to enter into force or be implemented.
- Tedros said another pandemic is a matter of when, not whether.
- Thirty countries in the Americas now participate in a PAHO-coordinated surveillance network.
- PAHO Director Jarbas Barbosa said countries are never completely prepared because of uncertainty.
Context
What is the PABS system?
The Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing system is a proposed reciprocal arrangement under which countries share information on dangerous pathogens and receive access to vaccines, treatments and diagnostics developed using that information. Yahoo! 20 minutos 新华网
Why is completing PABS important?
WHO says the system must be completed for the WHO Pandemic Agreement to enter into force or be implemented effectively. teleSURtv.net 新华网 Infosalus
What has changed in outbreak surveillance in the Americas?
Before 2020, only the United States and Canada had mass-surveillance capacity in the Americas; PAHO says 30 countries now belong to its monitoring network. Diario La Prensa LaPatilla.com Noticias SIN
Where Left and Right agree, and where they split
- Where Left and Right agree
- PABS is the gate through which the Pandemic Agreement takes effect, another pandemic is coming, and voluntary surveillance alone is not sufficient protection.
- Where Left and Right split
- Whether the priority is finishing PABS now to bind vaccine and treatment access for poorer countries, or slowing down to secure better reciprocity terms before locking anything in.
- Why they won’t converge
- This is a values divide over sovereignty versus binding equity: whether pathogen-sharing terms should legally bind states to reciprocal access now, or whether, as Malaysia's call for an annex respecting 'national legislation and state sovereignty' shows, equity must be negotiated without surrendering that control.
How left and right read it
Whether poorer countries get vaccines, treatments and diagnostics next time depends on whether the rules are written now, because PABS is precisely the mechanism that ties sharing pathogen data to access to what gets made from it. Tedros is right that another pandemic is a matter of when, not whether, and without PABS the Pandemic Agreement cannot even take effect. Surveillance alone is not protection. Finish it, and make the access binding.
Speed is the worst reason to sign a binding international commitment, because whatever obligations a country accepts under PABS become the gate through which the entire Pandemic Agreement enters into force. Thirty countries in the Americas already share surveillance through a PAHO-coordinated network without surrendering that leverage, so the machinery plainly works before any treaty compels it. Tedros is right that another pandemic is a matter of when. But if Barbosa is also right that no country is ever completely prepared, what exactly is being bought by locking in the terms now rather than getting the reciprocity right?
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